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[av_heading heading=’Also, Love (Part 7)’ tag=’h3′ style=’blockquote modern-quote’ size=’30’ subheading_active=’subheading_below’ subheading_size=’18’ padding=’10’ color=” custom_font=” av-medium-font-size-title=” av-small-font-size-title=” av-mini-font-size-title=” av-medium-font-size=” av-small-font-size=” av-mini-font-size=” admin_preview_bg=”]
BY PETER SOLIS NERY
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February 15, 2018
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R’S LOVE for me was a case of love at first sight. My love for him was a love that was grown — a love that was nurtured and nourished, cultivated like a plant.
When we started, I told him: “Your love for me is like a full-grown cashew tree, with a thick canopy of leaves, and generous branches of fruits. My love for you is like a cashew seed. It still needs to be planted, watered, and fertilized. In time, my love for you will bear strong branches, grow plenty of leaves, and bloom heavy with fondness until my branches, reach out, and touch you. Then, at a distance, we will be two cashew trees — you, the tall one; me, the short. But our branches will meet, will touch, like a caress, like shoulders brushing one another with longing and love.”
We were together for eight years; three of which, long distance. Long distance and bi-coastal — he, on the American East Coast; I, on the West Coast.
Then, when he couldn’t bear to be away from me anymore, he decided to live with me in Los Angeles. At that time, I could not leave my job as a nurse because my green card hadn’t been approved yet. And I would be embarrassed to leave the hospital that petitioned me.
I am a Filipino, an Ilonggo. And I have that value called utang na loob, a serious honoring of debt of gratitude. Suffice it to say though that I’ve already paid my hospital in full with my loyal service. Really, I worked hard even if the pay wasn’t humongous. I had received job offers that promised to pay me more for the same kind of work, but I stayed.
You see, in love and employment, I’m basically the stick-to-one kind.
I was loyal and devoted to R.
I am gay; but I’m not disloyal. I am not unfaithful. I did not entertain other men — and God knows, many flirted with me in the hospital and out. I am gay, but I do not believe that “Man is, by nature, polygamous.”
On Aug. 1, 2008, R and I were legally married in California.
We lived in L.A. for four years. We were serious patrons of the theater and opera. We luxuriated on various leisures and pleasures, and enjoyed all forms of entertainment.
On my days off from the hospital, I would exchange my nurse’s scrub for tailored suits — Prada, Armani, Versace — expensive clothes, that if it were up to me, I really didn’t care for. And I probably couldn’t afford by myself as a Filipino nurse who still supported his family back in the Philippines. But he dressed me up like Ken, like a doll — “You are a doll!”
And when I was suited handsomely we would dine at expensive restaurants like the Patina beside the Walt Disney Concert Hall, that boasted of French cuisine, where two matchbox-sized fish (called halibut, which for me means nothing, and I wouldn’t really know the difference from lapu-lapu) would cost $42, and the ice cream serving was sized like a squeeze of toothpaste.
Sometimes, it was La Serenata de Garibaldi, where we once lucked out and saw Nicole Kidman dining; and, at yet one other time, the gorgeous George Clooney.
After dinner, we would watch a movie or some stage production because we were season ticket holders to the bigger theaters in L.A. like the Ahmanson Theatre, Pantages Theatre, and Mark Taper Forum.
Because of the stage plays and movies I saw in L.A., I became more inspired and encouraged to write stories, dramas, and film scripts.
Because of my exposure to what other people are doing in literature and film in America, I became more daring and bolder in my themes, even if I continued to write for Filipino audiences. (To be continued/PN)
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